Cindy Wooden

The fear, sickness, death, mourning and economic impacts of COVID-19 should make people who are relatively well off and have access to health care think about "what it means to be vulnerable and live in precariousness on a daily basis," Pope Francis told members of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

While denouncing as an "abuse of power" coercive measures to promote vaccination against COVID-19, a leader of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X said getting vaccinated "may sometimes be an eminently prudent act in the moral sense of the term."

Bishops and others in the Catholic Church often lament the declining number of Christians, but rarely do they examine their own behavior and failure to show others how much God loves them, Pope Francis told the presidents of European bishops' conferences.

A living faith draws strength from remembering the past while continuing to grow in love of God and service to others, Pope Francis said.

Visitors, tourists and employees who want to enter Vatican territory will be required beginning Oct. 1 to show proof of vaccination, recovery from the coronavirus or a negative COVID-19 test.

In God's view, human greatness is measured by how one serves or helps someone who cannot offer anything in exchange, Pope Francis said.

The Catholic Church's advocacy for debt relief is focused primarily on enabling nations with high foreign debt to provide for their people, but the Vatican COVID-19 Commission also is worried about families staggering under debt burdens. In fact, the commission's economy task force has recommended "extensive debt standstills and reductions for indebted households" and the training and deployment of "debt advisers," including through parishes and Catholic charities, to help households get out of debt. While many families with steady incomes from remote working used the pandemic lockdowns to spend less and pay down their debts, people who lost income or lost their jobs often survived thanks only to food banks, charity, government aid and eviction moratoriums.

It is a 'scandal' that 'we produce enough food for all people, but many go without their daily bread,' Pope Francis says in message to U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Pope Francis' letter explaining why he was restricting the use of the pre-Vatican II Mass "fearlessly hits the nail on the head: the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) movement has hijacked the initiatives of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI to its own ends," said Archbishop Augustine Di Noia.

The Vatican's financial watchdog agency said that in 2020 more financial transactions were flagged as suspicious by Vatican offices, but after investigation it did not have to suspend any transactions or freeze any accounts.

New minister general of worldwide order has served on the 'peripheries,' among migrants, jobless, homeless.

Vatican has not confirmed Pope Francis' attendance at COP26, but he and other faith leaders are preparing for global conference.

Pope Francis, Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury and the Rev. Jim Wallace, moderator of the Church of Scotland, marked the 10th anniversary of South Sudan's independence and promised to visit the country when it has a stable peace.

The South Korean archbishop who was recently appointed prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Clergy said that while a papal visit to North Korea seems very unlikely, it could be just the outside intervention needed to overcome the stalemate dividing the Korean Peninsula.

Condemning the "heinous assassination" of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, Pope Francis urged the people of Haiti to shun violence and make a commitment to dialogue and solidarity as the path to a better future.

As a worldwide religious order, Franciscan friars need to find new and better ways to welcome the diversity of their members and allow it to challenge the ways they live the Gospel in the world, said Fr. Michael Perry, the order's minister general.

The organization of the universal Catholic Church has a precise hierarchy, but there is no such thing as a "vice pope," who steps in when the reigning pontiff is traveling abroad, ill or under anesthesia.

With the approval of Pope Francis, the Vatican has ordered the dissolution of an Italy-based lay movement, citing problems with the group's origins, catechesis, governance and finances.

Pope Francis is moving closer to a broad embrace of nonviolence and a declaration that modern warfare is so deadly and sophisticated that the traditional "just war" theories cannot apply.

When a popular Italian rapper slammed the Vatican for opposing a proposed anti-homophobia bill, he told his more than 12.5 million Instagram followers that the Vatican owed Italy some 5 billion euros ($5.9 billion) in back property taxes, which the Vatican said was incorrect.